


your name is on my skin

by KeenestGreen



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Climbing Class, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, No beta we die like Beth, One name is the person you love most, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, sort of a soulmate au?, the other is the person who will hurt you the most, this is short i just had an idea and i wanted to write it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27019618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeenestGreen/pseuds/KeenestGreen
Summary: Chris lives in a world where everyone is born with names on their wrists. One is the name of the person you will love the most in your life, and the other is the name of the person who will hurt you the most.The issue? Both of his names are the same one.
Relationships: Chris Hartley/Josh Washington
Comments: 7
Kudos: 103





	your name is on my skin

Chris Hartley, like almost everyone he knows, was born with names written on his wrists. 

The names are no mystery; one represents the person you will love the most in your life, and the other represents the person who will hurt you the most. Some people have multiple names, more than one deepest love or more than one mortal enemy. Often, people’s struggle with the names is figuring out which is which. That has never been a problem for Chris, though. After all, his names are the same.

_JOSH WASHINGTON_ is written on the inside of both of his wrists in thin black scrawl. He covers them with large bracelets. He and Josh have never really talked about their names, anyways. 

He’s thought long and hard about who Josh’s names might be, but constantly finds himself coming up blank. After the prank, Chris wondered if maybe it was all of them, Emily, Mike, Matt, Ashley, Jess, maybe him or Sam. But Josh only wore one bracelet, so that couldn’t have been right. If it was truly all of them, the names would have spilled down his arm, different colors, different handwritings. 

Then they go back up to the mountain. Chris knows Josh isn’t _okay_ , wouldn’t be _okay_ for a long time, but he thinks that maybe if he was there to support his best friend that everything would be alright in the end. That can’t have been right, because shit hit the fan almost immediately. In hindsight, letting Josh talk him into using the Ouija board was a mistake. Josh gets mad and storms off, and Chris tries not to run after him. 

He and Ash try to investigate whatever happened with the spirit board, but then he gets knocked out. Ash does too, he assumes, and he knows something else happened to her because he wakes up and she’s gone. He goes to look for her, and he finds her and Josh. The voice telling him to choose is terrifying, and he’d never tell a soul, but the choice was never even really a choice. He flips the switch to save Josh. Josh dies anyways.

Josh is dead, and suddenly it makes sense to Chris that Josh was the person who’d hurt him the most because this hurts _._ It hurts like nothing he’s ever felt in his life. He almost has to resist the urge to run to him, to look at Josh’s arms and find out who is written there, because Josh is _dead_ and it _doesn’t matter anymore._ He realizes, though, as he runs away with a sobbing Ashley, that he must know at least one of the two names Josh has written onto him. The person who hurt _Josh_ most: it has to be Chris. Josh must have died thinking Chris chose Ashley over him. 

He does love Ash, of course. But it’s innocent puppy love, something new. The way he feels for Josh? It’s soul-deep. Etched onto his skin by the universe, so strong that Chris has tried to forget it but never could. 

Before Chris knows it, he’s sitting at a table facing Ash with a gun in his hand. He points the gun at his own head. Ashley screams at him not to do it, to shoot her instead, but he presses the trigger. 

He lives.

Sam and Mike show up, now.

The Psycho walks out, and he starts talking, and then he takes his mask off and _it’s Josh_ . And now, Chris _really_ understands why Josh’s name is written on both of his wrists. 

Chris has never felt so many emotions at once. Relief, fury, terror, dread. 

Mike and Sam release him and Ash, and then Mike knocks Josh out. They bring him to the shed, and tie him up. Josh starts to mock him. 

“You know what that sound is?” he says. “That’s the sound of NEVER KISSING ASHLEY, YOU PUSSY.”

“Stop, Josh,” Chris tells him.

“You chose to save her life, she must be so grateful! Maybe now you could finally-”

“I didn’t choose her,” Chris says. Mike stands off to the side, looking like he feels he should intervene but doing nothing.

“W-what?” Josh chokes out. “You were supposed to,” he stops.

“Fuck you, Josh, I PICKED YOU!” Chris yells at him. In a moment of anger, he pulls down a bracelet and shoves his wrist in Josh’s face. Josh, upon seeing it, seems suddenly more lucid than he did a second ago. 

“Nono no,” Josh says. “I… I’ve hurt you, you can’t love me. I’ve hurt you.”

Chris takes off his other bracelet silently. 

Josh stares. 

Mike, by now forgotten by the others in the room, stares too. 

“Oh,” Josh says quietly. 

Mike says something by now, but Chris doesn’t quite listen. Something about how Josh killed Jessica, and that he was heading back to the lodge to make sure everyone was okay. Chris nods and Mike leaves.

“Did you?” he says.

“What?” Josh responds. 

“Did you kill Jess?”

Josh sighs and looks small. “If I did,” he says, “I don’t remember.” A long pause. “Do you really love me?” he asks.

Chris nods.

Josh laughs, a sharp, broken sound, leans back against the post he’s tied to, and passes out.

Chris takes the gun Mike had with him and stands watch outside. He’s not sure exactly what he’s watching for, but another moment in that shed with Josh and he knows he might have broken down entirely. Just his luck, his night consequently gets a _whole_ lot weirder. 

He gets ambushed by these… creatures. Chris is sure they’ll haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life, with their freakishly long limbs, skin pulled taut to their flesh, milky white eyes, and horror-movie teeth. This man, this stranger, comes to his rescue. They talk a little, strained words while they fight off the Wendigos (as he now knows they’re called). 

The stranger dies protecting him.

He runs a hundred feet back to the shed, Wendigos on his tail. He slams the door shut and locks it, relieved to find Josh still inside. Josh awakens with a start. 

“Chris? Chriiiish.” Josh drawls incoherently. “Chris Chris Chris.” he continues. There’s a scratching at the door of the shed. Chris freezes, but Josh starts to struggle at his ties. 

“Hey, hey,” he says in a panicked whisper. “Josh. You have to stay still.”

The Wendigo breaks down the door. There’s just one of them here now, but Chris knows that’s more than enough to take down him and Josh, especially in the state Josh is in. 

Josh, thank god, freezes at the sight of it. “No,” he says under his breath. “You’re not real.”

The Wendigo stalks forwards on all fours, monstrous in its speed and form, and puts its head up to Josh. It screams. 

Josh flinches, but does not move otherwise. While it’s distracted, like a very deadly game of Statues, Chris throws a rock outside. The creature must hear it hit the ground, and races out of the shed. After twenty minutes of agonized waiting, Chris finally feels like he can breathe again. 

He unties Josh, knowing that he’s in no state to hurt anyone at the moment. Josh tries to stand up. He wobbles like a baby deer, so Chris grabs him and hoists him onto his back. Josh clings onto him with his legs and arms. He weighs surprisingly little and Chris marks that down as something to be worried about later when their lives aren’t in immediate danger. 

He grabs the gun and stumbles out of the shed, scanning the area for Wendigos. Josh groans slightly and Chris shifts his weight and pulls Josh a little higher onto his back. Seeing the coast is clear, Chris begins to make it steadily back to the lodge, where the others must surely be. He gets fifty feet away from the safety of the house when it explodes into flame. Josh lets go of him and falls onto the ground from the shock, and Chris tumbles to his knees. 

“Oh god,” he cries.

And then he sees them. Ashley, Mike, Emily, and Sam, huddled together, outside, alive. Matt and Jessica, off to the side. Chris chokes out a relieved sob, grabs Josh in his arms, and stumbles towards them as fast as he can. 

The helicopters come down. 

Later, the police interrogate them all about what happened in the mines. Chris makes sure to emphasize, when they ask him, that Josh didn’t hurt anyone. That he just played some stupid pranks. That it was the Wendigos. He’s sure they won’t believe him, but he does his best. 

They all stick together, after being talked to by the police and given medical attention. Ashley can’t stand to look at Josh; she keeps crying at the sight of him. Sam just looks sad, and she keeps giving Josh upset looks. Josh himself looks shattered. 

Chris stays with him. 

He stays with Josh through therapy, through finding new meds and getting a new diagnosis. Through talking to his parents. Through anything. 

And several months after Blackwood, Josh brings it up unprompted. Their soul marks. 

“I’m so sorry it took so long for me to tell you this, Cochise,” he says, and takes off his bracelets. On one wrist is written Chris’s name, and on the other is Josh’s own. “I used to worry that it would ruin things, if I told you. And even after I knew you had my name, well. You always take care of me,” he continues. “If I told you, I didn’t want you to feel like you’re stuck with me forever.”

Chris tears up, and laughs, and hugs Josh tighter than he ever has in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> uhh so i've never published fanfic before,, lmk if this is any good or if it's absolute crap haha


End file.
